Saturday April 17th 2021

08:00 Lois and I are expecting a visit today from our elder daughter Alison and two of her children, Josie (14) and Rosalind (12), the first visit by any of Alison's family since October 2020, during the girls' schools half-term holiday.

We are both afraid that today is going to be a total disaster, because Lois is so stiff, after her work in the house and garden yesterday that she can't even put her stockings on, and I have to put them on and pull them up for her - oh dear! Luckily a couple of doses of ibuprofen makes it possible for her to do most things today, although she needs me to take things in and out of the oven, and other similar tasks, so I feel more useful than I normally do - my god!

the instructions Lois wrote for herself for getting the lunch ready

We feel we've got to put on a good show for our visitors today - we've been looking forward to them coming again for so long, and of course we want them to keep coming, now that the lockdown instructions have started to be relaxed. Oh dear, can we manage it?

10:00 Ali and the two girls arrive - both girls are fans of the TV show "Junior Bake-off", and Rosalind has baked some home-made jaffa cakes for Lois and me, with strawberry substituted for the traditional orange - yum yum! They're not really allowed into the house except for the utility room, which has a toilet and sink luckily.

Josie (left) and Rosalind showcasing the jaffa cakes she has made for us

we enjoy some of the jaffa cakes on the patio 

with cups of tea (the adults) and hot chocolates with marshmallows (the girls)

11:00 We go for a walk on the local football field. I'm worried that Lois will not be up to it because of her aches and pains, but the pills seem to have started to work. The girls want to ride on the zipwire but it turns out to be occupied by other youngsters - damn!

The sun is shining, but it's really cold - even Ali, who's 30 years younger than us, needs to have a warm winter coat on - what madness!!!!

There are two junior soccer matches going on, which is nice.

we go for a walk on the local football field - 

it's bright and sunny but freezing cold: brrrrrr!!!

you can see a couple of junior soccer matches going on in the background

11:20 We get round to the exercise equipment and Josie and Rosalind decide to give the machines a try. Lois and I always say that you never see adults on this equipment, just children who are curious about how they work - what madness!!!!

Josie and Rosalind try out the exercise machines

12:00 We come home and talk on zoom to our other daughter, Sarah, and her family who live just outside Perth, Australia. It's a good chance for the two sisters, Alison and Sarah, to chat together for once. Lois and I stay in the background to give the two sisters a chance to catch up - we're hoping to have a separate session with our little Aussie family tomorrow. One surprising bit of news is that Francis, Sarah's husband, is hoping to buy the family a second-hand boat - my god!

It's nice for one of our zoom sessions to be younger persons with younger persons, which must make a change for Sarah and Francis from the usual "grandparents-style" chat they get from us, to put it mildly: my god (again) !!!!! They can chat about schools, pop music, movies, TV cooking programmes like "Bake Off" etc - subjects that Lois and I can't really cope with at our advanced age - oh dear!!!!

Alison, Josie and Rosalind talk on zoom to Alison's sister Sarah,

Sarah's husband Francis and their 7-year-old twins Lily and Jessie

who live just outside Perth, Australia

13:00 We have the meal and then our visitors depart for home about 2:30 pm - it's a pity, but they have an invitation from their new neighbours for 5:30 pm. Alison, Ed and their 3 children moved into a new house in Headley, Hampshire a few weeks ago, and now is there big chance to get to know their neighbours, so fair enough!

14:30 Lois and I bid our visitors farewell - sob sob! We feel sad, but we feel quite exhausted at the same time. Ninety-nine percent of the time it's just Lois and me rattling around in this big old house, and we've become totally unaccustomed to non-stop chat unless it's on TV, that's for sure!

15:00 We watch Prince Philip's funeral on TV. We both think that the restrictions imposed by the pandemic actually make the funeral incredibly more moving and personal than a normal big grand state funeral would have been, and the small "choir" of four singers do a really powerful job, together with the churchmen with their lowkey but moving prayers and readings from scripture. 

And the Queen sitting on her own in a mask, like all her subjects would have had to have done, makes an incredibly poignant figure. This is a royal funeral like none other there's ever been, and (hopefully) won't happen again. Rest in peace, Philip!

18:00 We have a light "high tea" - toast and a cup of tea. Outside, the patio, which earlier was resounding with non-stop chatter has now fallen horribly silent - sob, sob!

our now empty, silent patio as the shadows lengthen - sob sob!!!!

20:00 We watch a bit of TV, the fourth part of an interesting series on the life of Winston Churchill. 

It's interesting that when Churchill visited Washington DC two weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, he was greeted like a movie star with cheering crowds lining his route. He seemed to form quickly a close relationship with Roosevelt. Staying in the White House for his visit, Churchill immediately set up his own "map room", an idea that Roosevelt admired - FDR set up his own map room, which later was converted to "situation room", a tradition still in existence in the White House today.

Churchill was warmly received when he gave a characteristically emotional speech to both houses of Congress, only the 3rd time such a thing had ever been done, and at the end of his speech he received an extraordinarily long ovation. His overall mission was to persuade FDR to join the war against Hitler and not just pursue the war against Japan - however, there was a sizeable body of opinion in the US against doing so. Despite this opposition, a few days later, FDR made a commitment to Churchill to accede to his request.

By 1942 the big issue was Stalin's desire for the UK and US to open up a second front against the Germans, but Churchill was convinced it was too early - he wanted to delay an invasion of German-occupied Western Europe until 1945, remembering how the Allies had got bogged down in France in World War I. Eventually it was agreed that the US and UK would invade North Africa instead and put off a landing in northern France for the time being.

Churchill was a bit of a charmer, and he knew it. In August 1942 he flew to Moscow to meet with Stalin for the first time, and he made a point of wearing his siren suit, to seem like "a man of the people", to impress Stalin and mould Stalin to his own way of thinking - no matter that his siren suits were elaborately tailored and often made of velvet. Oh dear!

Churchill thought he could charm both Stalin and FDR into agreeing to what he wanted - this seemed to be working for a time, but at the tripartite US/UK/USSR Tehran Conference in November-December 1943 Churchill found out there were only two "big players" at the table now, and he wasn't one of them - poor Churchill !!!! The decision was made for an allied landing in France, provisionally set for May 1944.

the tripartite Tehran Conference of 1942 - but it seems only two can play -

Poor Churchill !!!!!

Fascinating stuff !!!!

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!